Mary Lou Williams and her Conversion to the Roman Catholic Church

Mary Lou Williams was very influential during the early 20th century with her Big Band Jazz style. This all changed, however, on May 7, 1957 when she was baptized into the Roman Catholic Church. Williams first made her connection to the Catholic Church with the Reverend John Crowley whom she was introduced to by Dizzy Gillespie. Crowley was a jazz-loving priest that Gillespie had met in South America in 1956 and he urged Williams to “offer up her playing as a prayer for others” rather than leaving music all together. The other priest that was most influential in Williams’ life was Father Anthony S. Woods who became her first spiritual mentor in the Our Lady of Lourdes Church on 142nd Street in Harlem.Fr. Woods baptized and confirmed Williams in May and June of 1957 respectively.
With a new-found strong connection with the Church, Williams began to assert her musical influence in important ways. In 1958 Mary Lou founded the Bel Canto Foundation to help New York-area musicians with substance abuse problems. She also established thrift stores in Harlem to raise money to help these artists return to their art as well as contributing 10 percent of her own earnings.
After her conversion to Roman Catholicism her music combined two important themes of the time: the post-Vatican II upheaval of in the church and the civil rights movement. Her first sacred work was created in 1962 and was titled Black Christ of the Andes. It celebrated St. Martin de Porres, a seventeenth-century Dominican brother and the first black saint canonized by the Roman Catholic Church. In the Spring of 1967 briefly returned to Pittsburgh to compose her first Mass known as The Pittsburgh Mass. She wrote her second mass, Mass for the Lenten Season, the following year. In 1969 Monsignor Joseph Gremillion, secretary of the Pontifical Commission on Justice and Peace contracted Mary to write a Mass using texts from the Votive Mass for Peace which was called Music for Peace. This piece was also reworked by renowned choreographer Alvin Ailey in 1971 to be used in his dances of praise which he called Mary Lou’s Mass. Williams performed Mary Lou’s Mass at St. Patrick’s Cathedral on February 18, 1975 and it included a 60-voice youth choir and concluded with “spontaneous applause that transformed the solemn proceedings”. All in all, Mary Lou Williams continued her influential musical career even after she converted to Roman Catholicism. After she was baptized, she used her gift as a way to bring people together that shared similar beliefs and to spread the spiritual message she held so dear.